Stu Cowan: No shortage of underdogs on Habs’ roster

The Canadiens, as a team, are definite underdogs in their Eastern Conference semifinal series with the Boston Bruins.

Heading into the 2013-14 National Hockey League season, the Bodog betting website had the Canadiens listed at 28-1 odds to win their 25th Stanley Cup. After sweeping the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of the playoffs, the Canadiens’ odds dropped all the way to 8-1.

But the Bruins were listed as the Cup favourites heading into the conference semifinals at 5-2 odds, followed by Chicago (15-4), Pittsburgh (6-1), Anaheim (13-2), Los Angeles (7-1), Montreal (8-1), the New York Rangers (10-1) and the Minnesota Wild (12-1).

Everyone likes an underdog, and there are a lot of individual underdogs on the Canadiens’ roster.

Of the 20 Canadiens who dressed for Thursday’s 4-3 double-overtime win over the Bruins in Game 1, five of them were never selected at the NHL entry draft. That’s a quarter of the roster.

The Bruins had two undrafted players in their lineup: defencemen Torey Krug and Kevan Miller.

The five undrafted Canadiens are: defencemen Francis Bouillon, Mike Weaver and Josh Gorges, and forwards David Desharnais and Rene Bourque.

Bouillon, 38, and Weaver, who turned 36 on Friday, might make up the most unlikely defensive duo in the NHL.

Bouillon is in the NHL thanks to Michel Therrien, who has a long history with the defenceman. Therrien made Bouillon his captain when he was coaching the junior Granby Prédateurs and in 1996 they became the first Quebec team in 25 years to win the Memorial Cup. When Therrien was hired by Montreal to coach the Fredericton Canadiens in 1997, he asked the club to offer Bouillon a contract, but was told the 5-foot-8 defenceman wasn’t good enough to play in the American Hockey League. Bouillon spent his first two years after junior playing for the Wheeling Nailers of the East Coast Hockey League and the Quebec Rafales of the International Hockey League. Heck, he even played roller-hockey for the Montreal Roadrunners before making his NHL debut with the Canadiens in 1999.

The NHL was nothing but a dream for Weaver when he was playing at Michigan State University. The Gazette’s Pat Hickey recently reported that former Atlanta Thrashers GM Don Waddell went to scout one of Weaver’s teammates, but was impressed by the 5-foot-10 Weaver’s physical style of play on defence and offered him a $25,000 signing bonus after he graduated.

“I was just hoping to get a scholarship,” Weaver told Hickey. “I wasn’t drafted and I didn’t think pro hockey was in my future.”

Gorges wasn’t drafted after a junior career with the Kelowna Rockets that included a Memorial Cup championship in 2004 and a silver medal with Team Canada at the world junior championship. Gorges was also never picked at the junior Western Hockey League draft. Listed at 6-foot-1, Gorges was ranked 99th by NHL Central Scouting in his draft year, but was considered too small by NHL team scouts.

“Too small” is something the 5-foot-7 Desharnais has heard his entire life. He was passed over at the NHL draft despite having seasons of 118 and 108 points in his last two years of junior with the Chicoutimi Saguenéens. The Canadiens invited him to their rookie camp in 2007 basically as a favour to Guy Carbonneau, who was Montreal’s head coach at the time and had been part of the Saguenéens ownership group. Desharnais started his pro career in 2007-08 with the Cincinnati Cylclones of the East Coast Hockey League.

Size was never a problem for the 6-foot-2, 217-pound Bourque, but his inconsistency that often frustrates Canadiens fans also turned off NHL scouts when he was playing at the University of Wisconsin.

“We talked about that a little bit in his days with us and I’m not quite sure if maybe he had hit that consistent button enough in his college days,” longtime Wisconsin coach Mike Eaves recalled on Friday. “He would show flashes. The one thing that Rene could always do in college is that he was pretty consistent in his ability to play big in big games. He loved to score goals. Maybe that consistency button wasn’t there enough.

“This is a funny little fact,” Eaves added with a laugh. “He’s the best open-net goal-scorer I’ve ever seen. You know, when the other team pulls their goalie … he never missed. Honestly, he would have four or five goals a year that were empty-net goals. You know, some guys they get all nervous … but he would put that thing in all the time, which is kind of a funny inside story.”

Eaves added that Bourque’s personality might have something to do with his lack of consistency.

“He’s kind of a laid-back guy,” the coach said. “If you’re going to get to know Rene, I think you got to spend a lot of time with him. You and I both know people in that realm, where it just takes time because they’re quiet people and he’s one of those guys. We’re talking about both sides of the same coin. One one side, when the game’s on the line he tends to show up, but on the other side he’s not always there game in and game out.”

Bourque has hit the consistency button during the playoffs with four goals and one assist in five games to go along with a plus-6 and a team-leading 17 hits.

The Canadiens have a few other underdogs who were late picks in the NHL draft. Brendan Gallagher was a fifth-round pick (147th overall) in 2010, Andrei Markov was a sixth-round pick (162nd overall) in 1998 and Douglas Murray was an eight-round pick (241st overall) by San Jose in 1999. Brandon Prust was selected in the third round by the Calgary Flames in 2004, but was never picked at the Ontario Hockey League junior draft. He made the London Knights as a walk-on with Dale Hunter as his coach. Hunter still recalls Prust telling him: “Put me in and you’ll never take me out, coach.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

After the Canadiens acquired Weaver from the Florida Panthers at the NHL trade deadline in March in exchange for a fifth-round draft pick, the defenceman did a Q&amp;A interview for HabsTV on the team’s official website. One of the questions was what would be his best piece of advice for young players in the league?

“Just figure out what type of game they play,” Weaver said. “It took me a few years to really figure out that I couldn’t score goals and I was a guy that there was a need for. There’s a need for every type of player out there. Some guys are going to score goals, some guys are going to be on the penalty kill, some guys are just going to be depth guys. You’ve got to figure out your game.

“You can a make a pretty good career out of putting it off the glass and out,” he added. “There’s guys that can go end to end with the puck. You really got to figure out exactly who you are as a player and stick to that and don’t change it for anybody. There’s a puzzle at the end, but there’s a lot of pieces that actually have to go together to make that puzzle. That’s what every organization strives for is to find that completed puzzle.”

The Canadiens look like they’re getting closer to doing that with the help of their underdogs.

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